~~~

According to Tak, the best strategy to avoid the conductor on the night train to Valencia was to stand with your bags in the carriage with no seats, wait till the guy got close then go and hide in the toilet.

‘It’ll work as long as we don’t move, long as we’re confident.’

‘In the carriage or the toilet?’ asked Sila, half his head still with the horse statue.

‘Come on, action time.’

‘I feel tired,’ said Joanna, looking at a platform bench with an old man pinned to it.

‘Remember, confidence.’

~~~

Five minutes before the train was due to leave, as the three stowaways stood with bags at their feet, blank, drained and Delon, a door opened half a metre in front and the conductor stepped out.

There was a moustache, a grey uniform, an ossified sense of fatigue and when Tak tried to pre-emptively explain things in Spanish, the man simply pointed to the platform and said, ‘out’

not in Spanish

in English

which was the real blow cos Tak had reeled off at least eight distinct sentences.

‘Can I sit down now?’ asked Joanna, dropping her bag on the platform as soon as they were off the train.

‘Fucking pedant,’ said Tak, eyes still on the space residue of the conductor.

‘Upstairs?’

~~~

Back in the main chamber of Barcelona-Sants Station, all the benches were taken and even if they did get one, they couldn’t sleep there or lie down as the guards would come and swat their legs with night sticks

which could’ve been worse

Tak said

if they were in the US

Detroit or Chicago

though he’d never been to either city and, to be fair, in the US they’d probably be able to at least find a shelter somewhere, a place they could get a bible, sleeping bag, hand-job, maybe soup

to be honest he didn’t know

he really had never been there

just guesswork from a Danny Glover film he’d seen.

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